Segway Friendly Locales (incl. establishments and geographies) Database

[KSagal]

Originally Posted by PaulDV

I'd be willing to help resurrect this feature, providing hosting and the web software.

If you guys are interested, please let me know.

Cheers,
Paul.

Paul,

I think it would be nice to have a database to check when people go on vacation or travel for work. At this point, it is fairly hard to figure out where are segway friendly locations away from your own home area...

Good luck.

[PaulDV]

Hi Karl,

I agree, a database (however implemented) would be of use to all.

Does anyone here have such a database, perhaps from one of the afore-mentioned websites which have been taken down? I'd like to have something to work with and see if I can breath some life into it.

Cheers,
Paul.

[Bob.Kerns]

Perhaps if you provide a simple REST/JSon API, you could interest Segway dealers and tour operators in embedding it into their sites?

This might drive contributions and usage, general awareness and visibility (which might have a positive impact on the general state of Segway-friendliness) -- and perhaps they might even be persuaded to kick in to help cover the hosting. (Which can be done pretty cheaply these days).

A bit of sample HTML/scripting, that they can customize to integrate with the look of their site

[PaulDV]

Thanks for the suggestions Bob.

I would love to raise awareness and the public perception of Segways and would like to construct a site that would act as a hub for all things Segway, where people interested in Segways can go to and from there find out or participate in subjects to do with Segways.

I've seen the Segway Social site and, perhaps I'm not using it right but it doesn't seem very user friendly and doesn't seem to have that much information on it - certainly not enough for me to want to frequent it a lot.

I would like to create a site which has links to forums (this one being the main one of course - probably embedded in the site - but also with links to others that I am made aware of); Gareth Brandwood's Legalise Segways petition (I'm based in the UK so it'll probably have a distinctly UK slant to it); Segway Inc, of course,; Country-specific dealership list; country-specific tour operator list (possible ratings by customers at some point?); segway-related news; social website links (mainly for promos and advertising); user groups listing; events calendar (maybe allowing the promotion of informal gliding events to promote interaction between owners) as well as the afore-mentioned "Segway Friendly Zones" list. There could even be a stolen register for people to post to in a consistent format with the ability to update the status so that as and when stolen machines are located they can be removed from the list - hopefully a good resource for potential buyers to ensure that they're not buying a stolen machine.

I would also like to promote some sort of membership (free for individuals) and provide a membership level of "affiliate" (or something) for commercial operators which has a proviso that they cross-link prominently to us from their sites in exchange for their own "featured" link and personal page (think sponsored links on Google as a rough analogy) with them getting some sort of promotional material that they hand to all of their customers, be they buyers or day trippers, in order to encourage traffic to the site and all of the sites that link off of it (such as this forum and places that allow Segways to be used legally).

In short, somewhere for Segway owners and enthusiast to go to that they can feel at home with, and for potential Segway users to go to find out as much about these wonderful machines as they can in a positive and friendly environment and where they can go to experience them even more.

I realise that pretty much everything I've listed here is available out there on the net somewhere, but it is distributed across a vast array of sites, most of which never even crop up in Segway related searches and thus don't get the patronage they deserve, and I believe that having everything, if not in one place, then at least having a single reference point which leads to them all, would be of benefit to the Segway community.

I'm sure that when I have something up and running that it will be too big for just one person to manage so I would definitely be needing to enlist the help of a few enthusiastic members to take ownership of one or more features of the site and manage/administer them to keep them current and lively at some point.

Offers of help would be gratefully received, but first I need to get my hands on some content, so if anyone has data dumps for any of the sites previously used for the "Segway Friendly Zones" database, I would love to get a copy of them to analyse and see what I can do to formalise the information and present it in a user-friendly manner (I'm an IT bod who loves tinkering with this sort of stuff).

Cheers,
Paul.

[PaulDV]

Hi everybody!

I have a fledgling site in the works and I'm going to be needing some help and was wondering if anyone here would be able to chip in.

I'll need some access to the previous databases mentioned above in this thread - would someone be able to get the info to me or point me to where I can take the details from?

I would also like to display some images of all of the different types of Segway that have been available along with some stats. Would anyone be able to furnish me with them please? Full accreditation will be given for any images used.

If you can help I'm any way, please PM me and we can discuss further 'offline'.

Thanks,
Paul.

[KSagal]

Paul,

I am no webmaster, so I can offer little in the way of access to previous databases, but for your request about machines and stats, you may want to go to Segway Corporate and their website. I am sure you will see the latest images, at least. Perhaps a dealer in your area could give you some more historic data.

The problem with coming to a public forum like this for data along the lines of stats, you may get great information, or bad information, and you would have little way tell the difference.

Good luck, I look forward to seeing your results.

[PaulDV]

All good points Karl, thank you.

The Segway site only contains a few images of the current models, which may be enough to get me started, but I'll fire off an email to the company to see if they can supply images for previous models along with approx production dates as well.

I'm still working on the menu structure (and hence the structure of the site) at the moment, but once it's at a point that I'm happy with and I've got some sample content in every section, I'll be looking for people to trial it out and add more content before launching it properly, and I'll be happy to send you a link and get your feedback on it.

Cheers,
Paul

[PaulDV]

Just by way of an update:

Segway Inc have not replied to my requests for more info, nor have they responded to my request to use the word' segway' in my domain name (something which their standard terms prohibits without their permission).

I also, out of interest, responded to one of their many recent emails encouraging me to enquire about starting up my own Segway tour. Their response? A product catalogue from Segway UK advising me that while they would be happy to sell me a Segway, they are not legally allowed to be used in public places.

All in all, 1 out of 10 Segway!

[gbrandwood]

Originally Posted by PaulDV

A product catalogue from Segway UK advising me that while they would be happy to sell me a Segway, they are not legally allowed to be used in public places.

All in all, 1 out of 10 Segway!

Did they send it through the post? If so, add another 0.5 to your score. If they emailed it, deduct 0.5

[KSagal]

Originally Posted by gbrandwood

Did they send it through the post? If so, add another 0.5 to your score. If they emailed it, deduct 0.5

I get email responses, and they do not annoy me as much as the response that only includes a link to somewhere else. Those do deduct at least 3/4!